Among men 25 to 55 with a high school diploma or less, the share with jobs fell from more than 90 percent in 1970 to less than 75 percent in 2010, reports . For African American men ages 20 to 24, less than half were working.

"The Congressional Budget Office examined income trends for the past three decades. It found sizable gains for all income groups."

Was he hoping nobody clicked the link? It says nothing about the past three decades, but does have this:

"As a result of the uneven growth from 2009 to 2010, the share of income for the top 1 percent increased by 1.6 percentage points, and the share for the middle three quintiles taken together fell by 1.3 percentage points. "

Rich people are not the reason poor people are poor, so let's stop victimizing the rich through draconian taxes and inflammatory rhetoric and work on real solutions for income inequality, like giving the top 1 percent a tax cut

Did you and I read the same article, submitter? Your headline sort of runs off the rails right after that first comma.

vpb:Yes, it's a consequence of wealthy people having too much control and little people not having enough.

It's not so much "control", as the allocation of social costs leaving the wealthy with disproportionately large discretionary incomes and the poor disproportionately small discretionary incomes. Though I suppose that can be argued to lead back to increased ability of the rich to spend money in politics towards increased social control by the rich as well as increasing that disproportion.

abb3w:vpb: Yes, it's a consequence of wealthy people having too much control and little people not having enough.

It's not so much "control", as the allocation of social costs leaving the wealthy with disproportionately large discretionary incomes and the poor disproportionately small discretionary incomes. Though I suppose that can be argued to lead back to increased ability of the rich to spend money in politics towards increased social control by the rich as well as increasing that disproportion.

Precisely, the fact that the wealthy have disproportionate influence is why they are able to bear less of the costs while getting more of the benefits.

t is also the reason that public policy tends to favor the wealthy and ignore the middle class and poor. It used to be that in order to sell your products in the US you had to either make them here or pay significant income tariffs. Basically the nations control of the largest consumer market in the world was used to benefit the middle class.

After free trade policies became popular, this control was used to gain access to foreign markets. It stopped being used for the benefit of the working classes and was used to benefit the businesses.

Claims that it would benefit workers because we would export more were nonsense because the products that US business were making were increasingly made overseas anyway.

It may be that the gains of free trade were larger than the sacrifices, but the sacrifices were made by the middle class and almost all the gains went to the people who owned the businesses.

t is also the reason that public policy tends to favor the wealthy and ignore the middle class and poor. It used to be that in order to sell your products in the US you had to either make them here or pay significant income tariffs. Basically the nations control of the largest consumer market in the world was used to benefit the middle class.

jayhawk88:Among men 25 to 55 with a high school diploma or less, the share with jobs fell from more than 90 percent in 1970 to less than 75 percent in 2010, reports . For African American men ages 20 to 24, less than half were working.

Reasons aside, those numbers - if accurate - are farking frightening.

They are, but it is a reflection of a changing labor market. Wealth concentrating at the top hasn't helped, but I feel he's taking the results from that change and saying "Pay no attention to the fact all the the vast majority of the wealth generated in the last 40 years has been concentrated in a small percentage of the population."

I'd also wager the percentage of the population with a high school diploma or less has fallen since the 70's too.

Still looking for a graph that goes back that far.

According to the latest numbers from the BLS, 10,748,000 that don't have a high school diploma are in the civilian labor force, with a participation rate of 43.7% and an unemployment rate of 9.8% for December 2013.

Those with a diploma but no college are at 36,242,000, participation rate of 58.0%, and an unemployment rate of 7.1%

For comparison, Bachelor's degree holders or higher are 49,759,000 civilian labor force, with a participation rate of 75.3%, and an unemployment rate of 3.3%

Total civilian labor force is 133,770,000 if I added up the numbers correctly, so that is about 8% of the labor force that doesn't have at least a high school diploma. and 35% that have a high school diploma or less.

Those numbers seasonally adjusted, and I kinda forgot what point I was trying to make.

Anyways.

It really seems he took a total number of people in those age ranges and said, look at all these people not working, even if they are not looking for work.

For starters, the poor are not poor because the rich are rich. The two conditions are generally unrelated. Mostly, the rich got rich by running profitable small businesses (car dealerships, builders), creating big enterprises (Google, Microsoft), being at the top of lucrative occupations (bankers, lawyers, doctors, actors, athletes), managing major companies or inheriting fortunes. By contrast, the very poor often face circumstances that make their lives desperate.

These circumstances were created by rich people to make themselves even richer.

Perhaps if the rich stopped demonizing the less fortunate by calling them lazy, mooching welfare queens buying lobster with their food stamps who should probably work another job if you can't feed your family oh and if you just got married all your problems would go away plus you've already got a refrigerator and anyway you could have it worse somewhere else, all while loudly proclaiming their own righteousness as "job creators" and fighting tooth and nail against or actively trying to dismantle programs that help people, poor people might stop punching back.

*sigh* Solutions to income inequality do not elude us, there are vast numbers of solutions to this problem everything from the government guaranteeing jobs for every able body adult over the age of 18 to just taking the money directly from the rich and giving it to the poor. What eludes us is the collective will to implement a solution.

The reason joblessness is high is because we have so many people and have gotten so damn good at doing the work we have to do that we simply cannot employ everyone. It doesn't work like that. We are in a post-scarcity, post-growth economy.

ikanreed:Slaves2Darkness: What eludes us is the collective will to implement a solution.

This very concept is actually considered evil by ~35% of the population and ~50% of the voting population.

What the hell do they think government programs are then? I mean everything from national defense to education is just the will of the people. For that matter what do they think we are doing when we elect representatives? That too is the collective will of the we the people.

Maybe what we really need is big camps that we can send the poor to for proper training and education. Maybe we can call them Freedom Through Work camps. That would fix the problem, call it a final solution to the poor.

You know I'm really thinking I should get two stamps one of them should say "Fark the poor!" and the other "Eat the rich!". Then I should stamp $100 dollar bills with the "Fark the poor!" slogan and $1, $5, $10, and $20 with "Eat the rich!"

I would say the poor are poor because a change in technology allows for a race to the bottom mentality that is perpetuated by all layers of the economy. The poor are outbidding each other for lower paying jobs and the rich are more than happy to go along and to give it a shove now and then.

Slaves2Darkness:What the hell do they think government programs are then? I mean everything from national defense to education is just the will of the people. For that matter what do they think we are doing when we elect representatives? That too is the collective will of the we the people.

Maybe what we really need is big camps that we can send the poor to for proper training and education. Maybe we can call them Freedom Through Work camps. That would fix the problem, call it a final solution to the poor.

Don't take my simplification(that I think as fair) of someone's views as a launching off point for your attacks on those views. Come on, man.

meat0918:jayhawk88: Among men 25 to 55 with a high school diploma or less, the share with jobs fell from more than 90 percent in 1970 to less than 75 percent in 2010, reports . For African American men ages 20 to 24, less than half were working.

Reasons aside, those numbers - if accurate - are farking frightening.

They are, but it is a reflection of a changing labor market. Wealth concentrating at the top hasn't helped, but I feel he's taking the results from that change and saying "Pay no attention to the fact all the the vast majority of the wealth generated in the last 40 years has been concentrated in a small percentage of the population."

I'd also wager the percentage of the population with a high school diploma or less has fallen since the 70's too.

MrBallou:"The Congressional Budget Office examined income trends for the past three decades. It found sizable gains for all income groups."

Was he hoping nobody clicked the link? It says nothing about the past three decades, but does have this:

[www.cbo.gov image 600x403]

"As a result of the uneven growth from 2009 to 2010, the share of income for the top 1 percent increased by 1.6 percentage points, and the share for the middle three quintiles taken together fell by 1.3 percentage points. "

The actual report (which can be found in the sidebar) does show an increase in after tax income over the last three decades for the bottom quintile.

ikanreed:whistleridge: Flawed premise: rich people are in fact a big part of the reason poor people are poor. If you believe otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you; send me an email and we'll close this deal.

Well, it's not so much that it's not true, as it is unprovable.

Between the two of us, there is a table with 50 burgers on it. Through various means, I obtain 49 of those 50 burgers, leaving you with 1. It's not "unprovable" that I am the reason you only have 1 burger.

jst3p:meat0918: jayhawk88: Among men 25 to 55 with a high school diploma or less, the share with jobs fell from more than 90 percent in 1970 to less than 75 percent in 2010, reports . For African American men ages 20 to 24, less than half were working.

Reasons aside, those numbers - if accurate - are farking frightening.

They are, but it is a reflection of a changing labor market. Wealth concentrating at the top hasn't helped, but I feel he's taking the results from that change and saying "Pay no attention to the fact all the the vast majority of the wealth generated in the last 40 years has been concentrated in a small percentage of the population."

I'd also wager the percentage of the population with a high school diploma or less has fallen since the 70's too.

llortcM_yllort:MrBallou: "The Congressional Budget Office examined income trends for the past three decades. It found sizable gains for all income groups."

Was he hoping nobody clicked the link? It says nothing about the past three decades, but does have this:

[www.cbo.gov image 600x403]

"As a result of the uneven growth from 2009 to 2010, the share of income for the top 1 percent increased by 1.6 percentage points, and the share for the middle three quintiles taken together fell by 1.3 percentage points. "

The actual report (which can be found in the sidebar) does show an increase in after tax income over the last three decades for the bottom quintile.

meat0918:jst3p: meat0918: jayhawk88: Among men 25 to 55 with a high school diploma or less, the share with jobs fell from more than 90 percent in 1970 to less than 75 percent in 2010, reports . For African American men ages 20 to 24, less than half were working.

Reasons aside, those numbers - if accurate - are farking frightening.

They are, but it is a reflection of a changing labor market. Wealth concentrating at the top hasn't helped, but I feel he's taking the results from that change and saying "Pay no attention to the fact all the the vast majority of the wealth generated in the last 40 years has been concentrated in a small percentage of the population."

I'd also wager the percentage of the population with a high school diploma or less has fallen since the 70's too.

Harbinger of the Doomed Rat:ikanreed: whistleridge: Flawed premise: rich people are in fact a big part of the reason poor people are poor. If you believe otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you; send me an email and we'll close this deal.

Well, it's not so much that it's not true, as it is unprovable.

Between the two of us, there is a table with 50 burgers on it. Through various means, I obtain 49 of those 50 burgers, leaving you with 1. It's not "unprovable" that I am the reason you only have 1 burger.

If you did not try to get more than one hamburger then, ya it is kinda your fault

Saiga410:Harbinger of the Doomed Rat: ikanreed: whistleridge: Flawed premise: rich people are in fact a big part of the reason poor people are poor. If you believe otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you; send me an email and we'll close this deal.

Well, it's not so much that it's not true, as it is unprovable.

Between the two of us, there is a table with 50 burgers on it. Through various means, I obtain 49 of those 50 burgers, leaving you with 1. It's not "unprovable" that I am the reason you only have 1 burger.

If you did not try to get more than one hamburger then, ya it is kinda your fault

I tried to get more, but the system for dividing up burgers requires that you put two burgers down to get to the table. Thanks to your parents, your family had six burgers. You put two down and were able to start grabbing. My family only had two, but I have two brothers. Eventually when it was my turn, I put my two in, but was only able to grab one because I had a significant barrier to entry.

Afterward, you thought it was unfair that the restaurant owner asked for one and a half burgers back, so you got together with your buddies and agreed to send your burgers to Table 2. You got your burgers off of Table 2 any time you needed to grab a new batch of burgers at our table, thus ensuring that you never had to give any to the owner and always got first pick. I still had to wait my turn, and found it really hard to save my burgers.

"Just go hungry," you said. "Don't eat for a few turns and you can save!"

Which is an easy thing to say when your Table 2 burger stack is overflowing and you've sent people to the other burger joint over there, bringing some back for you. You've never had to wait a whole turn with just one burger.

All the while, your little echo chamber of friends congratulates each other about how good with burgers you are, never realizing that you've been playing a rigged game since the start. It's just rigged in your favor. So while you get upset because you're playing fair, you refuse to realize that simply by playing, you have a natural advantage to those playing with a handicap.

And as long as you keep the rules the way they are, the game can never be fair.

A Cave Geek:llortcM_yllort: MrBallou: "The Congressional Budget Office examined income trends for the past three decades. It found sizable gains for all income groups."

Was he hoping nobody clicked the link? It says nothing about the past three decades, but does have this:

[www.cbo.gov image 600x403]

"As a result of the uneven growth from 2009 to 2010, the share of income for the top 1 percent increased by 1.6 percentage points, and the share for the middle three quintiles taken together fell by 1.3 percentage points. "

The actual report (which can be found in the sidebar) does show an increase in after tax income over the last three decades for the bottom quintile.

/Fun Fact: Chrome spellcheck doesn't think quintile is a word.

DNRTFA, but is that adjusted for inflation?

It keeps mentioning real income, so I'm assuming it does include inflation. However, the article defines labor income in the following way:

Cash wages and salaries, including amounts allocated by employees to 401(k) plans; employment-based health insurance premiums; the employer's share of Social Security, Medicare, and federal unemployment insurance payroll taxes; and the share of corporate income taxes borne by workers.

It would not be surprising if healthcare costs ate into a lot of the income gains described in the report. This seems consistent with other reports I have seen where median household income has remained flat but household income + employer health insurance has increased alongside productivity.

Harbinger of the Doomed Rat:ikanreed: whistleridge: Flawed premise: rich people are in fact a big part of the reason poor people are poor. If you believe otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you; send me an email and we'll close this deal.

Well, it's not so much that it's not true, as it is unprovable.

Between the two of us, there is a table with 50 burgers on it. Through various means, I obtain 49 of those 50 burgers, leaving you with 1. It's not "unprovable" that I am the reason you only have 1 burger.

Right, it's completely obvious, but it's not like there's an absolute chain of logic that would stand up in court to show that you it.

Obama's Reptiloid Master:Saiga410: Harbinger of the Doomed Rat: ikanreed: whistleridge: Flawed premise: rich people are in fact a big part of the reason poor people are poor. If you believe otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you; send me an email and we'll close this deal.

Well, it's not so much that it's not true, as it is unprovable.

Between the two of us, there is a table with 50 burgers on it. Through various means, I obtain 49 of those 50 burgers, leaving you with 1. It's not "unprovable" that I am the reason you only have 1 burger.

If you did not try to get more than one hamburger then, ya it is kinda your fault

I tried to get more, but the system for dividing up burgers requires that you put two burgers down to get to the table. Thanks to your parents, your family had six burgers. You put two down and were able to start grabbing. My family only had two, but I have two brothers. Eventually when it was my turn, I put my two in, but was only able to grab one because I had a significant barrier to entry.

Afterward, you thought it was unfair that the restaurant owner asked for one and a half burgers back, so you got together with your buddies and agreed to send your burgers to Table 2. You got your burgers off of Table 2 any time you needed to grab a new batch of burgers at our table, thus ensuring that you never had to give any to the owner and always got first pick. I still had to wait my turn, and found it really hard to save my burgers.

"Just go hungry," you said. "Don't eat for a few turns and you can save!"

Which is an easy thing to say when your Table 2 burger stack is overflowing and you've sent people to the other burger joint over there, bringing some back for you. You've never had to wait a whole turn with just one burger.

All the while, your little echo chamber of friends congratulates each other about how good with burgers you are, never realizing that you've been playing a rigged game since the start. It's just rigged in your favor. So while you get upset because y ...

All of this is a pretty ridiculous set of assertions. That said I'll play along. What exactly stops guy at table 1 from going to table 2? Further more what stops him from going to the restaurant owner and setting up an agreement in which he will get 3 burgers sell two to table 3 (we'll say) and keep one for himself? Hell why not go to the restaurant owner and say you want to manage the burgers at table 1 and are willing to do this for one burger out of 10 so that the manager no longer has to worry about the issue (negotiate appropriately). For that matter why not suggest that table two is sell burgers to table 1 (in some alternate to burgers economy) for something that table 2 wants and again include yourself at 1/10 ratio?

The game isn't rigged in a fashion which can not be exploited by all. The CHOICE, and it is a choice, to play the game from the perspective you see is your own failing.

1. I don't think the rich should get some massive tax break for no damned reason2. Stop demanding that they should get punished for success3. While your analogy is still stupid, thinking even remotely outside the box has given options to your poor kid in which much risk is involved, but will turn reward if fruitful ... kinda like any other business venture.4. The truly poor generally are in that position due to a systemic issue of bad choices. Staying there or getting out are equally available options if one wants to put in the work.

I also note that you blame the government for fixing the game due to lobbying of the rich. Why is it that you assume that the same people who broke the system are going to provide you with the fix? How does this train of logic run?

ikanreed:Harbinger of the Doomed Rat: ikanreed: whistleridge: Flawed premise: rich people are in fact a big part of the reason poor people are poor. If you believe otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you; send me an email and we'll close this deal.

Well, it's not so much that it's not true, as it is unprovable.

Between the two of us, there is a table with 50 burgers on it. Through various means, I obtain 49 of those 50 burgers, leaving you with 1. It's not "unprovable" that I am the reason you only have 1 burger.

Right, it's completely obvious, but it's not like there's an absolute chain of logic that would stand up in court to show that you it.

That is what's called a "zero-sum" game, and regardless of non-renewable resource, dwindling water supplies, distribution inefficiencies, and corruption on vast scales,